Saturday, March 01, 2014

Vote Buying And The Minimum Wage Gambit

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction – Newton’s Third Law of Motion

The best way to persuade someone in Connecticut to vote for
you is to buy their vote. Progressives, who nowadays take money from the middle
class and give it to one-percenters, do this with a certain reckless abandon: Does anyone
truly believe that that Aetna Insurance Company really needed the money given
to it by Governor Dannel Malloy to survive?

Of course there are problems when the money to purchase a
vote in Connecticut is taken from taxpayers who, given the parlous state of the
economy after the Democratic hegemon has taken its share, are drowning in high
taxes and liberty strangulating regulations.

To be sure, the debts of the average Connecticut taxpayer are
considerably less than those of national taxpayers following four years on
President Barack Obama’s economic death row. But almost always the state
taxpayer and the national taxpayer are one and the same person, since federal
and state taxes are paid out of the same pockets.

On the date of Mr. Obama’s inauguration, the debt held by the
public stood at roughly $6.307 trillion, according to the Treasury Department’s
"Debt to the Penny" calculator. The gross federal debt was about
$10.627 trillion. Currently, the debt held by the public is $12.425 trillion,
double the Bush figure, and gross federal debt is $17.410, a great leap forward
in indebtedness.

Mr. Obama and the resourceful Governor Dannel Malloy together
have discovered a means of purchasing votes without raising taxes to liquidate
a debt that has doubled since Mr. Obama took office. You simply raise the
minimum wage and, hesto-presto, you have purchased the woman’s vote. As represented
by the figures above, the debt, like the gentle rain, evenly falls on both the
just and the unjust, on both men and women in the workforce.

“Male voters,” according to one commentator,
“generally speaking, are easy to figure out: raise my taxes I punch you in the
nose. Malloy has raised taxes. Female voters, however, process information
through a different filter. What’s my future with you in charge? What’s my
standard of living? Is my kid safe in school? I’m a single mom with kids to
feed, are you helping me?”

Of course, if you are a single WORKING mom attempting to
bring up your child as best you might in Connecticut’s one party state, you may
be inclined to wrinkle your nose at the prospect of a higher minimum wage.

Why so? Because you will find yourself in the male boat,
generally speaking, casting about for noses to smash.

Why so? Because an increase in the
minimum wage artificially raises the cost of labor, and politically induced increases
in the costs of labor are either sustainable or not. If small businesses cannot
sustain the cost increase, they will throw workers on the unemployment rolls,
which could be costly to you, if you are a WORKING WOMAN who pays taxes and are
not a welfare recipient.

Artificial – which is to say, political
– increases in the cost of labor also drive up prices. And increases in prices
cut into household budgets. Political increases in the costs of labor have the
same effect on prices as taxes. If you tax a product and increase its price,
you are driving nails into Connecticut’s coffin lid. People flee taxes like the
plague, which is why Mr. Malloy is offering tax deals to large companies
whenever they appear to be gazing longingly at the exit signs. United
Technologies is only the latest recipient of middle class taxpayer largess. According
to a story in a Hartford paper, “Tax Breaks Encourage United Technologies To Stay In State,” UTC might bolt Connecticut if it is not fortified by Mr.
Malloy’s crony capitalist tax breaks, a measure that will permit the
international multi-billion dollar company to maintain its headquarters in the state for
the next fifteen years.

In the progressive crony capitalist bubble, where Newton’s
Second Law of Motion has been permanently repealed, only ONE consequence per
action is permitted – the consequence you desire. Do you want people making a
minimum wage, some of whom are women, to vote for you? Increase the minimum
wage and never fear deleterious unintended consequences. But for
non-progressives who live in the real world, the unintended consequence
occasionally is worse than the political solution designed to solve the
problem.

The most serious problem in the United States for the last
few decades has been the acceleration in spending, as indicated by the debt
figures cited above. And that problem cannot be settled by politically popular
expedients offered by progressive politicians whose chief – and some would say
ONLY -- concern involves election to office.

If a man who has burned my house down appears at my charred
doorway to offer me a free couch lost in the fire, I might be grateful for the
couch, but I would still punch him in the nose – especially if I were a woman
the arsonist might take advantage of because he thought I was less able than a
man to calculate gain and loss.